Hopkins has respected Belward restrictions, October 23, 2013, response by Fritz W. Schroeder, Baltimore. The writer is vice president for development and alumni relations at Johns Hopkins University. (See original article below.)

Will Hopkins respect its donor's wishes?, October 16, 2013, The Baltimore Sun, By Anne D. Neal, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) and co-author of "The Intelligent Donor's Guide to College Giving."

Maryland Life Magazine, Belward Farm is chosen by Preservation Maryland as one of the top ten endangered properties, 2013"The Civil War-era Belward Farm, owned by the Banks family for over 100 years, is one of the last remaining farms in the Gaithersburg region. To preserve it, Elizabeth Banks sold the land to Johns Hopkins at a greatly reduced price with the understanding that the university would build a small-scale facility there. Upon her death, Hopkins reneged. It now plans to erect a high-rise commercial complex on the site, which will destroy most of the pristine farm."

Belward Farm’s late owner, Elizabeth Banks, devoted her life to the care and maintenance of the farm which had been in her family for over 100 years. She spurned developers who wanted to build commercial projects on her farm but Montgomery County wanted very much to develop this farm, one of the last remaining properties in the area.

In the 1980s, the County officials brought in Johns Hopkins University to convince Ms. Banks that the University would build an academic campus on her farm. Ms. Banks agreed to their proposal to build the campus and to use a smaller portion of the farm for commercial development in order to fund the construction of the campus.

Ms. Banks sold Belward Farm to the University for $5 million rather than the $54 million she had been offered by other developers in order to have an academic campus on her farm. The University wrote the deed with enough language to convince Ms. Banks they would honor her intentions, but included loopholes to give the University "flexibility".

Then the officials at Johns Hopkins and Montgomery County simply waited for Ms. Banks to die. Soon after her passing, the County, at the request of Johns Hopkins, rezoned Belward Farm for a high-rise, high-density commercial office complex which will accommodate over 15,000 people .

There are no plans for Johns Hopkins to have a presence on Belward Farm. Instead, 99-year ground leases are being offered based on the points in the deed that were added by Hopkins to give them "flexibility". The recent Master Plan, promoted by the University, requires that only 40% of the property needs to be “science-related”.

On November 10, 2011, Ms. Banks’ heirs filed suit against Johns Hopkins University in an attempt to force the University to honor the donative intent of Elizabeth Banks. Unfortunately, the courts allowed Hopkins to prevail.